Life with kids, dogs, cats, bunnies, sheep and fish is many things but never boring.
"Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear,the strength so strong mere force is feebleness, the truth more first than sun, more last than star."

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Birthday chickie-babies...

as Laurent likes to call them! Our first batch of chicks run through the hexabator incubator have arrived. They were quite obliging and hatched the evening before and day of his birthday party which he was quite excited about as well!

Of the 12 Australorp eggs that were set and one Wyandotte egg 3 Australorp eggs candled clear at 8 days. The shells all showed a heavy amount of light spots, which is the likely reason and the hens may need some more calcium grit or have been laying heavily? (These were purchased eggs so I've no way of knowing.) When checked these eggs showed no development whatsoever so the embryos never started maturing or they were infertile to begin with.

Of the remaining eggs, at 17 days one of the Australorp eggs cracked while I was rotating them courtesy of tornado child hugging my legs at an inopportune time making me drop it! Usually you'd discard a cracked egg as a matter of course as it's a virtual death certificate and will go rotten in very short order. Exploding rotten eggs in an incubator are a bad thing! However every time I checked this egg, the chick was still bopping about in there so I kept leaving it 'one more day'. When it hit 21 days, we were rewarded with a bunch of peeping and looked in to discover one had hatched and one was on it's way...All 9 Australorps and 1 Wyandotte from that setting hatched successfully... including the cracked egg! One of them was even kind enough to hatch in my hand during La's party.Here's La with his "chickie-babies"...

Most of these little guys are for sale, so if anyone near me is looking for some Australorps, chicks are $5 ea unsexed atm.

Better to get at least a pair and preferbly a trio as they feel most secure with a group. I'm sure whenever you're ready to get some chickens I'll have some. If not you can pick what you like and I can set a batch for you.:-)